Arts Tonight

Arts Tonight Monday 25 February 2013

Arts Tonight: Remembering Peter Rice

Monday, 25 February, 10pm: Tonight we mark the publication of a new book on an important Irish contributor to world architecture: Traces of Peter Rice, edited by Kevin Barry (Lilliput).

With contributions from architects and fellow engineers, artists, former colleagues, friends and family, the book celebrates the late Dundalk structural engineer who worked on the Pompidou Centre, the Sydney Opera House, the Louvre Pyramid, and many more iconic buildings of the world. Rice died at the age of 57, just over 20 years ago, at the height of his career, but before he died published an intense and lyrical memoir, An Engineer Imagines, which, though now out of print, remains a kind of cult book for both architecture and engineering students.

On the programme, we hear Minister for Education (and architect) Ruairi Quinn, who launched the book in Dublin last week; Kevin Barry, editor of the book andEmeritus Professor of Humanities at NUI Galway; sculptor Vivienne Roche; architect and journalist Shane O'Toole; architect Sean O Laoire;engineer and architect Sophie Le Bourva of Arup, who worked with Rice; architect Ian Ritchie, who formed the company Rice Francis Ritchie with Rice and Martin Francis in the 1970s; Peter Rice's wife and daughter Sylvia and Heidi Rice; and extracts from Rice's own book mentioned above, An Engineer Imagines, read by Arthur Riordan.

The exhibition tours to the Centre Culturel Irlandais from 14 May-28 June and then to the Farmleigh Gallery in Dublin in the autumn.

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Coming up on Monday 4 March

Another chance to hear our programme with Kaleidoscope: A Night of Music. Cellist Kate Ellis, violinist Clíodhna Ryan and friends play an eclectic mix of centuries-old and modern music, including a recent composition, Jump, by Linda Buckley, and special guest Gavin Friday's rendition of Shakespeare's Sonnet 40.